Save our public transit systems before they go down
Save our public transit systems before they go down
By failing to address the public transit problem, we risk a future that is costlier, more polluting, and where gridlock holds people and goods back from their full potential.
The federal government is poised to release their next-generation transit investment program, the Canada Public Transit Fund. It may surprise you to learn that not a single penny of this $30-billion program is allowed to go toward stopping transit service cuts. Since 2016, it has been the federal government's policy to limit the public transit funding it provides to building new subway or light rail infrastructure or buying new buses. It cannot be used to make existing transit more reliable by increasing service hours and the frequency of trains or buses. This is despite studies showing that these measures are the most important drivers of key outcomes like ridership growth and emissions reductions.
Nationalize public transit.
That's the fucking solution - it's a public service not a business.
Most if not all transit agencies in Canada are already belong to the public (as opposed to private businesses) already, no? TransLink mentioned in the article sure is, BC Transit too. BC Feries too... (kind of, crown is the sole shareholder).
edit: lol what even does it mean to get downvotes for this
Public yes, but not nationalized. User fees and ends-means and run-to-fail has severely damaged the critical resource that is our bc highways ferry system, and removed any reliability from the transit systems which are our main evacuation system in emergencies. These are services classed as Emergency and Essential that can barely provide minimal service in optimal circumstances, let alone under stress.
We have failing boats, fairweather trains, ditched buses, etc. Why? Costs of doing it right is not borne out by user fees and gov proceeds are insufficient. A guy in castlegar shipping to Vancouver pays nothing extra for road access aside from fuel costs; shipping it further to Nanaimo or Victoria means massive cost increases hat he'd rather not pay in taxes OR user fees. So while he enjoys access to roads maintained by Transpo, he sneers at doing his part to maintain a ferry system and will consistently vote against smart money and seamless service because some fucking suit from Edmonton told him user-pay is better for ferries because then it's the others' problem. Screw those guys.
Buses. Paid mainly by the gov but with user fees to ensure the poorest can't use them. And still the buses are in the ditch at the Markham turnoff in the winter for lack of winter tires. User fees do not support a decent tire budget, let alone an actual biz continuity plan.
There's Government Service, and there's Public Service Badly Managed for Profit. Hint: if our ferry system tries to bill itself as a tour operator, it's in the latter group.
Give it another year and our many layers of government will be banning busses because they "cause traffic" and stopping commuter trains because they interfere with shipping.
It feels like I'm missing something, maybe because I'm not a politician or a transportation engineer. It's very common that upper spheres of government will provide extra funding focused on capital expenditures like building new infrastructure but won't commit to operational expenditures like maintenance and salaries.
I wonder if it's some sort of political game of being able to claim funding for shiny new things, because expansion is flashier than maintenance. Or maybe there's a real governance aspect to it, considering that OPEX should stay under control at the right level as to not overstep the scope of each sphere of government - transit agencies should not grow accustomed to funding that is supposed to be extra. IDK, I guess I'm not ready to have an opinion on this. I'll just trust whatever the folks at Movement say.
Friendly reminder that nearly any canadian city of substantial population had electric trams decades ago. If we could build electrified transit then, we could certainly build it now.
They want transit to support itself through user fees and local taxes. That's about 90% taxes and 10% user fees.
Because user fees worked so well for them during COVID. Losing 10% meant service reduction and less user fees and then more service reduction, etc.
City buses in Canada are switching to on demand for weekends. Which is unreliable. I prefer not using it, for how unreliable it is in my city.
This is what corruption looks like in practice folks.
US has similar issue with roads. They prefer to build new shit than to fix old shit...